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Monday, March 19, 2012

Writing Contest: The Type of Person Who

I'm really excited about this round's contest, and I hope you guys will be too. I'll share what the prompt is, and then for the first time I'll give a sample. This is a different type of prompt, so I hope an example will help clarify:

NAME was the type of person (girl, boy, man, woman, etc.) who

So here's an example of how this might look when the sentence is completed:

Skylar was the type of girl who never asked her friends what they thought of her clothes. She knew she looked perfect.

I've never offered examples before because I feared limiting your creativity. But this is a prompt I saw in a writing textbook (What if? by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter) and I didn't fully understand what they meant until I read the samples, so I thought I would provide one to show you guys what the intention is. If you still have questions, feel free to either email me or leave them in the comments section.

Your word limit is 108 words (prompt sentence + 100 words) and is due Wednesday, March 28th by 11:59pm Kansas City time.

Think of the prompt sentence as the opening of a novel. Your job is to draw the reader in, and give them a hint of your story world and the action to come.

You may email your entry to me by clicking here or at Stephanie(at)GoTeenWriters.com. Include your name as you would want it to appear on the website, and no attachments please!

I always send confirmation emails, so if it's been 48 hours and you haven't heard from me, feel free to check back.

The contest is for those age 21 and under. One entry per person please.

Christa Banister (I told Christa that my goal for 2012 was to correctly spell her last name in every post. I'm 1 for 1, Christa!)

Christa Banister is a full-time freelancer writer, specializing in music, movies and books-related reviews and interviews and is the author of two novels, Around the World in 80 Dates and Blessed Are the Meddlers. Based in Dallas, Texas, she also weighs in on various aspects of pop culture on her personal blog. For more information, including her upcoming book signings and sample chapters of her novels, check out her Website.

Roseanna M. White, author of two Biblical love stories and LOVE FINDS YOU IN ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND makes her home in the mountains of Western Maryland with her husband, two small children, and the colony of dust bunnies living under her couch. After graduating from St. John's College in Annapolis, MD, she and her husband founded the Christian Review of Books, where she is the editor. She is a member of ACFW, HisWriters, Biblical Fiction Writers, and HEWN Marketing.

I have a question, this may be a bit obvious to everyone else, but when I saw your sample I thought it meant that our entries would be shorter this round. But at the later it said that our entries would be the normal 100 words (and te print sentence). Your sample is only about 22 words. How are we to finish using all of our words? Does t have to on the same topic (such as all 108 words are about Skylar's appearance)? Or should they vary a bit (such as it talks about her appearence, her intrests, her school...)?

Sorry for the confusion! I meant for mine to be only a sample of how you might complete the sentence, not for how you would write the entire entry. I'm sure you're not the only one who was confused by that!

The same ideas apply to this prompt as to the others - you're writing your 100+ words like it's the opening of a novel. So it's however you think you can best draw the reader in to your story world.

Possibly. So I start out with, "Sam was the type of person who did not need to have people tell him that she was different," and then continue as it as the story? Such as, "Being the only child of an two Olympic gold medalists (numerous times, in fact) ensured that he was always busy with figure skating. Or gymnastics. Or speed skating. And all he wanted to do was have time to study for the chemistry class he was flunking. Was that to much to ask?" I did no check to see how long it was and it is not very good, but is this what you mean? I am still a bit confused.

I think she meant the partial sentence (NAME was the type of person who...) to count as the entire official prompt sentence, 'cause it's an 108 word limit (although the prompt is only 7 words...), so your ending to the sentence has to fit into your 100 words. Sorry, that came out more confuddling than intended lol.

Hey, Sierra. Lydia's right, and I didn't even think she was too confuddling :) It can be 108 words (or less) and it's because of the partial sentence. Lydia was also right that the prompt is only 7 words. I went with 108 in case someone wanted to use their character's first and last name.

Can I modify this to say "XZY was NOT the kind of person to..."? Also, can I make the subject a place? For example: "XYZland was/was not the kind of place..."Those are probably both a "no", but I have nothing to lose by asking.

Lily, I'm glad you asked, because others have emailed privately with the same question :) For the sake of preserving the apples-to-apples element of the contest, I think it needs to be a person and that the sentence needs to remain as given.

Thank you so much for having this site available! Not to mention taking time out of your day to write articles and talk to young authors. I found this site only the other day and have been pouring through it. I've shared it with a few other teen writers and they to have expressed how useful a resource it is. :) Thank you!

This is the first contest I'm going to enter, and I'm a little confused. First of all, is the response to the prompt supposed to read kind of like the back of a book? And also, the sample winning entry contains a lot of emotion, but it feels like it would be a lot harder to do that in a prompt like this. And thank you for this amazing website! I love the Steps for Writing a Novel :)

The response to the prompt sentence should read like the opening of a novel. Admittedly, this type of opening might not be best for a novel, but you're still looking to intrigue the reader and establish some sense of storyworld.

The prompts often lend themselves to different types of entries. Some naturally have more emotion built in and others more action. So don't feel like you have to match the tone of the sample.

I didn't see this till after I entered. Oops! Guess I sort of already disqualified myself. Thanks for giving me the chance to enter anyways. And please send a thank you to the two lovely judges. :) Their words were encouraging.

No problem about the confusion! I really appreciate your willingness to do these contests and donate your time!